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Day 11 - Nolay to Vonnas
By MatthewAfter Chalon we hit some fairly major road works. Rather than fighting our way through rubble and holes in the road, we followed the déviation signs around countless back roads until they all mysteriously vanished. We had to rely on the GPS compass to guide us in the right direction. Luckily the compass wasn't lying today and we found the right D road with signs to Cuisery - our first meeting point with John. Whilst on the way to Cuisery we stopped for another break. During this break, John phoned us to say that he was making his way through the déviation and that he would meet us soon. He also mentioned that he was having problems with the vans breaks. We thought nothing much of this and continued to cycle the 5km or so to Cuisery. By the time we arrived in Cuisery, we had neither seen nor heard from the van, so after waiting for 5 minutes, we decided that we'd be better off cycling ahead and letting John catch us up. He did so soon after in a small town called Arbigny, 50 miles into our route. We all pulled over into an empty road-side car park, where the younger three amused ourselves by throwing stones at things and Daniel went to talk to John about the van and the route. John, looking very frustrated and annoyed, said that the brakes would need replacing fairly urgently and that he'd look for a local Mercedes dealer near the campsite. The good news was that his camping book knew of a good campsite about 20 miles south, which we agreed to meet at. The final 20 miles went smoothly and strangely enough, we passed a Mercedes dealer about 5 miles before the campsite - it looked like we were in luck.
The campsite was a fairly crowded place with lots of young kids riding around (in circles for hours) on mountain bikes, but it had everything that we needed - hot showers, electricity, nice flat ground to pitch the tents on and even a swimming pool. Almost as soon as we had arrived, John went off in search of the pool, but arrived back at the tents a few minutes later looking slightly annoyed. He explained that it was a speedo only pool and that he'd been refused entry on the grounds of his swimming shorts being 'too dirty'! Now resigned to an afternoon of sunbathing and relaxing, we sat outside our tents and watched as a few fighter jets paid us a visit overhead. I spend a few hours writing day 7's blog entry (yes, we're extremely behind... I'm writing this entry on day 19!!!)
Dinner was much the same as usual tonight... pasta in tomato sauce. Not that I'm complaining, it's all good carbs and it tasted good too. Later in the evening, we heard a storm beginning in the distance. It look as though it might be heading our way, so we packed our stuff into the van and the tents and watched as hundreds of bolts of lightning earthed themselves in the distance. Thankfully the storm passed us by but it still managed to give us quite a light show. I tried to get some pictures of the lightning, but few of them worked. The storm stayed within sight for the rest of the night, unfortunately stopping any chance of us seeing the predicted meteor shower to the west of us.
The rest of the night was devoted to getting ourselves ready for the morning - making up bottles of energy drink, hanging up kit to dry and preparing the route. Daniel spent a good hour or two, sitting in the middle of both laptops, lots of maps and the GPS kit, looking busy. He eventually proclaimed that he had successfully gotten the route onto his GPS and that he was very happy with this fact. We all nodded and smiled.
Everyone but me and Daniel had gone to bed early, so we were in charge of packing valuable items into the van and locking everything away securely. Oh what a hash we (well, Daniel to be more precise) made of this job. It was all going well until Daniel went to lock the van door. Using his superhuman strength, he managed to completely shear the key in half while it was in the lock. After much foul language and fiddling with screwdrivers, I was instructed to wake John, who would surely be able to solve the problem. This proved difficult at first as he was fast asleep and replied to my calls of 'John, get up', merely with increasingly loud snores. As soon as my hand was even close to the zip of his tent, however, he was instantly wide awake. I told hom of the issue with the key and he came to help. He too could not coax the broken key out with the screwdrivers, so he went of to find his swiss army knife. While all this drama was going on, I though I'd take advantage of the ongoing electric storm in the distance and get a few more photos. Again, none of them really worked, so I don't know why I'm telling you this. Meanwhile, Daniel had managed to free the key from the lock with a pair of scissors and he and John were contemplating what to do next. It looked like we'd need to cycle back to the Mercedes dealer and get the key and the brakes fixed there... so not much distance was likely to be covered the next day.
On a brighter note, Paul had received a text saying that Rooney had broken his ankle... just another fact to annoy Kevin with.
Distance: 72.26 miles
Time: 4:03:34
Average Speed: 17.80 mph
Weather: Warm in the morning, Hot in the afternoon, Stormy in the evening
Day 12: Unscheduled Rest Day in Vonnas
By JohnAfter breaking the key it seemed like we weren’t going anywhere in a hurry, but on the way into the campsite the day before we had seen a Mercedes dealer near the main road. Kevin, having missed out on the excitement of the night before got up early and was really pleased to be the first one awake. Since we couldn't drive the van we
decided to cycle to the Mercedes dealer, yes even me, had the idea to set off before the others to save embarrassment, nice leisurely cycle to the dealers. Got to the dealers and it was opened, so rode in, should be getting used to it by now but still amazed to find the service part of the garage was closed for August, The Salesman suggested we try a key cutters in Macon. By this time the guys had arrived and we set off into Macon, only about ten miles, a chance to see how the guys ride as a team, seeing it from a distance as they hurtle off at great speed. Catch the guys up on the outskirts of Macon and we ride round until we find the closed tourist office, closed until you walk into the door and it opens, the tourist info lady explains in lisping English that there are two shoe repairers who cut keys, but they maybe closed because it is Monday, we find one of them, predictably closed, not for Monday but for al of August. Back in the Tourist info we learn there is a Carrefour a couple of miles out of town, we wind our way out of town, losing Kevin as he randomly falls over, possibly Paul knows what happened but is saying nothing. By the time we get to Carrefour I have ridden twenty miles, bad, but there are another twenty to get back, even worse. Armed with two new keys, and warnings from the key cutter that one will only work for the doors not the ignition, we set off back to the campsite.
To my relief, from cycling mostly, we see a kwik fit type place who do freins (brakes) While Matt stuns everyone with his linguistic skills I explain that we need new disks and pads, Disques and Plaquetts apparently, the garage owner is hesitant to order the parts without seeing the van so I agree to return with the van in the afternoon.
On the way back to town we stop at decathlon, getting lots of looks for turning up wearing all the branded gear, the real purpose of the visit of course is to get speedos to meet the French swimming pool laws, and all get matching shorts.
Another short ride, Hmmm, if we do this ride in short hops maybe i will even survive, and we are back in the town, and find a cafe to get some lunch, after being ignored by all the staff for about half an hour I ask Madame in halting French if it is possible for us to eat here today please. Suddenly we have service, albeit with some attitude. After nice but small sandwiches we went off to find some more food. And I finally had to face the ride home, if the ride to Macon had been downhill, the ride back was uphill, from the notes I am told it shows that it was my longest ride ever, certainly the hardest, and would have been a lot harder without the team helping me along.
Our new keys needed a bit of fine tuning, cutting off loads of the plastic so that they would fit into the ignition, but the releif when the van started with the new key was really quite something.
While the guys went off to test their new speedos I took the van back to our friendly kwik fit to check what parts would be needed, I'm sure the grinding noise was getting worse with every touch of the brakes, so engine braking was the order of the day. Having reassured the garage guy what van we had and what was needed we agreed he would have the parts in the morning, and i should get there at 10 o'clock and everything would be sorted out.
Meanwhile the guys have been to the pool, they couldn’t stay too long in the pool, they say because it was too cold, but i think because the speedos left nothing to the imagination so they were feeling self conscious.
When they got back to the pitch they all fell asleep apart from Matthew who selflessly updated blog pages. Even though it was a rest day by the time I got back they had resorted to pot noodles, Tesco value, not very good apparently. When i got back at 7:15 it was hard finding some empty space to park the van in, so I ended up running over some of the kit, well that’s my story anyway.
After riding to Macon and then driving back i couldn't be bothered to cook anything fancy so resorted to Carrefour fresh ravioli and carbonara sauce, which everyone seemed to like so not too bad.
After a tiring day (for me) early to bed to be lulled to sleep by the sound of strange animal noises, the strange animals in question being the team members, definitely night not morning people.
John
decided to cycle to the Mercedes dealer, yes even me, had the idea to set off before the others to save embarrassment, nice leisurely cycle to the dealers. Got to the dealers and it was opened, so rode in, should be getting used to it by now but still amazed to find the service part of the garage was closed for August, The Salesman suggested we try a key cutters in Macon. By this time the guys had arrived and we set off into Macon, only about ten miles, a chance to see how the guys ride as a team, seeing it from a distance as they hurtle off at great speed. Catch the guys up on the outskirts of Macon and we ride round until we find the closed tourist office, closed until you walk into the door and it opens, the tourist info lady explains in lisping English that there are two shoe repairers who cut keys, but they maybe closed because it is Monday, we find one of them, predictably closed, not for Monday but for al of August. Back in the Tourist info we learn there is a Carrefour a couple of miles out of town, we wind our way out of town, losing Kevin as he randomly falls over, possibly Paul knows what happened but is saying nothing. By the time we get to Carrefour I have ridden twenty miles, bad, but there are another twenty to get back, even worse. Armed with two new keys, and warnings from the key cutter that one will only work for the doors not the ignition, we set off back to the campsite.
To my relief, from cycling mostly, we see a kwik fit type place who do freins (brakes) While Matt stuns everyone with his linguistic skills I explain that we need new disks and pads, Disques and Plaquetts apparently, the garage owner is hesitant to order the parts without seeing the van so I agree to return with the van in the afternoon.
On the way back to town we stop at decathlon, getting lots of looks for turning up wearing all the branded gear, the real purpose of the visit of course is to get speedos to meet the French swimming pool laws, and all get matching shorts.
Another short ride, Hmmm, if we do this ride in short hops maybe i will even survive, and we are back in the town, and find a cafe to get some lunch, after being ignored by all the staff for about half an hour I ask Madame in halting French if it is possible for us to eat here today please. Suddenly we have service, albeit with some attitude. After nice but small sandwiches we went off to find some more food. And I finally had to face the ride home, if the ride to Macon had been downhill, the ride back was uphill, from the notes I am told it shows that it was my longest ride ever, certainly the hardest, and would have been a lot harder without the team helping me along.
Our new keys needed a bit of fine tuning, cutting off loads of the plastic so that they would fit into the ignition, but the releif when the van started with the new key was really quite something.
While the guys went off to test their new speedos I took the van back to our friendly kwik fit to check what parts would be needed, I'm sure the grinding noise was getting worse with every touch of the brakes, so engine braking was the order of the day. Having reassured the garage guy what van we had and what was needed we agreed he would have the parts in the morning, and i should get there at 10 o'clock and everything would be sorted out.
Meanwhile the guys have been to the pool, they couldn’t stay too long in the pool, they say because it was too cold, but i think because the speedos left nothing to the imagination so they were feeling self conscious.
When they got back to the pitch they all fell asleep apart from Matthew who selflessly updated blog pages. Even though it was a rest day by the time I got back they had resorted to pot noodles, Tesco value, not very good apparently. When i got back at 7:15 it was hard finding some empty space to park the van in, so I ended up running over some of the kit, well that’s my story anyway.
After riding to Macon and then driving back i couldn't be bothered to cook anything fancy so resorted to Carrefour fresh ravioli and carbonara sauce, which everyone seemed to like so not too bad.
After a tiring day (for me) early to bed to be lulled to sleep by the sound of strange animal noises, the strange animals in question being the team members, definitely night not morning people.
John
